This invention relates to the electronics circuitry field. More particularly, this invention is an alignment mechanism for a computer system having a portable computer and a docking station.
Portable computers have grown in popularity over the last several years. Despite the fact portable computers are by their nature small, lightweight, and easy to carry from place to place, their capabilities, memory and processing power rivals that of their much larger sibling, the desktop computer. In fact, portable computers are so handy, especially for today""s mobile computing professionals, that it is difficult to see why anyone needs a large, bulky desktop computer anymore.
One major drawback of portable computers is their relative inflexibility to easily attach peripherals, such as printers, modems, external speakers, external monitors, external input devices, and the like. If a portable computer is going to truly replace a desktop computer when the user is in his or her office, the quick, easy, flexible attachment of peripherals is important.
More recently, docking stations have been developed for portable computers that allows them to more flexibly attach peripherals. Docking stations vary in complexity from relatively simple manually operated port replicators to more complex mechanically operated full-fledged docking systems. When a portable computer is connected to these docking stations, such as when a user is in his or her office, substantially all of the benefits of a desktop system can be achieved, while maintaining the flexibility the user has to take the portable computer with him or her on the road.
While docking stations have made it possible for portable computers to be true desktop replacements, they are not without their problems. One such problems is the relatively difficult nature of connecting a portable computer to the docking station in the first place. If the docking station does not have a complex mechanical mechanism to assist the user with this docking process, many users will be unable to successfully accomplish the docking process in a repeated manner, and may even damage the docking station, the portable computer, or both. Unfortunately, the existence of a complex mechanical mechanism greatly adds to the cost, size, and weight of the docking station. As the docking station gets bigger, heavier, and more expensive, the benefits of the portable computer and docking station over a desktop computer become less apparent.
Another problem with docking stations is that they typically must change every time a new model of a portable computer is released that has a different size than previous models of the portable computer. This raises the expense of the computing system, and again makes the benefits of a portable computer and docking station versus a desktop computer less apparent.
A computer system has a docking station and a portable computer. The docking station has a platform and a housing having a docking connector. The platform has one or more elevated rails. The portable computer has a computer connector, a base unit having a top portion and a bottom portion, a display unit connected to the top portion of said base unit, and one or more recessed grooves on the bottom portion of the base unit. The elevated rail or rails on the docking station interact with the recessed groove or grooves on the portable. computer to guide the portable computer into a proper alignment with the housing of the docking station when the portable computer is placed on the platform and slid towards the housing so that the computer connector lines up with and connects to the docking connector. The docking station platform may have side walls or rotatable bumpers on the sides of the platform to provide coarse alignment between the docking station and the portable computer, and to prevent the portable computer from sliding off the platform during the alignment process. Preferably, the recessed groove or grooves are flared at the back edge of the portable computer to further assist in the alignment of the portable computer with the docking station. The docking station of the preferred and alternate embodiments of the invention can accommodate portable computers of different form factors and thus do not need to be replaced each time a new model of a personal computer is released with a different form factor.